Email Retention

1. Email Retention

2. Summary of Email Processes STEC Meeting December 12, 2008

3. Review of Follow Up Questions • What happens to email once deleted? • Best practices for email archive and backup retention? • What are benchmark institutions doing? • What are current practices for lab machines?

4. Deleted Email • Deleted mail is moved to the Trash folder within GroupWise. • The user can delete the mail from the trash at any time. • System default for deleting mail in trash folder is 8 days. • Mail left in trash folder longer than 1 day will be backed up by nightly backup process and kept 30 days.

5. Archives and Backups • Novell’s Best Practices document states that archive and backup configurations should be driven by the organization’s policies and legal constraints. In order to ensure full data recovery in a disaster, the backups should be retained for at least 7 days. • In the past year, 68.2% of the 44 GroupWise restore requests required backups older than 7 days.

6. Summary of Benchmarks • Policies vary from university to university. • No clear standards or practices exist. • Backup retentions range from 2 days to 1 year. • Some universities archive, some do not.

7. Summary for Benchmarks • Stony Brook (Faculty and Staff) • Can archive any or all information with no limits. • Daily backups are retained for 30 days. • Weekly backups are retained for 6 months. • Monthly backups are retained for 1 year. • Stony Brook (Students) • No policies on archiving. • Daily backups are retained for 30 days.

8. Summary for Benchmarks • SUNY at Buffalo • No archiving. • Backups are retained for 30 days (recently changed from 6 months). • Temple University • No archiving. • Backups are retained for 7 days. • University of Alabama – Birmingham • No policies on archiving. • Backups are retained for 6 months.

9. Summary for Benchmarks • University of California – Irvine • No policies on archiving. • Backups are retained for 3 months for disaster recovery purposes. • University of Cincinnati - Main Campus • Had archive solution for offload storage from server, but not intended for retention. • Backups are retained for 30 days.

10. Summary for Benchmarks • University of Iowa • Archiving available but no policies. • Backups are retained for 2 days. • Items deleted and emptied can be recovered for up to 3 days. • University of New Mexico • No archiving. • Backups are retained for 5 days.

11. Summary for Benchmarks • University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill • Follow policy of: • “print a paper copy of any e-mail message which is of lasting or archival value to the University” • “e-mail has no long-term value and can be deleted as soon as its immediate value is ended” (http://www.unc.edu/finance/ddd/emailretention.htm) Developed in accordance with North Carolina Public Record Laws.

12. Summary for Benchmarks • University of South Carolina – Columbia • Archiving available with no policy. • No restores for email. • Deleted mail retained in trash for 7 days then in trash recovery for 30 additional days. • University of Utah • Can archive if department allows. • Backups are retained for 3 months.

13. Summary for Benchmarks • Wayne State University • No archiving. • Backups are retained for 45 days.

14. Lab Environment • The HSC User Center does not offer the GroupWise desktop client which is needed to perform archiving. • The South Computer Center, which is managed by Reach, uses software that removes any changes at reboot, which is performed weekly. • The College of Business lab reimages all machines bi-weekly.

15. Questions?